Deeper Into Music Blog

I’ve spent some time recently tweaking both the website and the sound of Deeper Into Music. Here’s a brief overview of some of the major changes.

First, I’ve upgraded the encoders and that seems to have cleaned up the sound (to my ears at least) quite a bit on the mp3 streams.  Can you tell a difference?  Leave a comment.

I’ve also upgraded the Song Information pages quite a bit.  They now contain information about all albums from the selected artists as well as a listing of all tunes featured on Deeper Into Music by that same artist.  You get to the song information pages by clicking on the info icon presented in several places across the main Deeper site pertain to songs and artists.  Here’s the symbol that indicates there’s a Song Information paged linked: .

On the front page I’ve added some day-specific content.  There’s additional information about Vintage Deep Cuts, Sunday Spice Rack, and Request Tuesdays, for example – on specific days. Request Tuesdays is a new Deeper Into Music feature where request limits are relaxed allowing you to request more songs more frequently on Tuesdays.

For the techie server curious, I’ve added gzip compression to more items served and added more caching to static pages or content that’s infrequently updated.  This is becoming increasing important to organic search returns as Google is reported to now place a high premium on page load speed in their new indexing routines.

The Divine Comedy - New album coming in June 2010

I haven’t been neglecting the new music adds to Deeper; you can always find these music additions listed on the main site. One tune I’m particularly fond of is “At the Indie Disco” by The Divine Comedy.  Catchy and smile-inducing.  A new Divine Comedy album is slated for June 2010.

Finally, found via the Last 8 section, you can now display the entire playlist history for the last six months.  I plan to make these history pages feel better integrated into the site, but these down and dirty get the job the done.

It’s a pleasure to create this content for you and make it useful and entertaining.  I hope it is and I hope you’ll use the resources on the main site from time to time.

As always, I’m thrilled to hear your suggestions about how to make Deeper Into Music better.  Leave a comment below and leave one in the Guestbook.

Tuesdays are now all about listener favorites on Deeper Into Music.

Some stations offer you “Tuesday 2-fers” where you get to hear two songs by bands you don’t really like.  Things are different at Deeper Into Music.  Tuesdays are now more about what you want to hear.  Every Tuesday, for 24 hours starting at 12 midnight ET, the request limits are relaxed and you can now request more of what you want to hear more often.  Making a request on Deeper Into Music is quite simple.  Visit the DIM request page and you’re set.  Search for tunes by artist, song or album, the press the “request” button.

Since DIM resides in the US, current DMCA regulations require all listener requests to be delayed at least one air before they can air.  Hopefully that’s a small inconvenience in relation to the ability to make a request and hear nearly anything from the DIM library.

A few old request restrictions still apply on Tuesday: recently played or queued artists won’t be available to request until sufficient time has past.

Beyond the immediate influencing of the playlist by having your request played, frequently requested songs are given more “weight” in the general playlist and play more often at other times as well.  You can even influence this further by rating your request when it airs.  You’ll find the ratings feature on the Last 8 page of DIM.

Make sure to drop by Deeper Into Music on Tuesdays and make your request.

BBC 6 Music.  Ever heard of it?  If you live outside of the UK, chances are no.  But to those of us who love “real radio” – radio with expansive music formats and intelligent DJs – this digital music service was a godsend.  I say “was” even though the station is still on the air because 6 Music appears to headed for the history bin.  Several published reports from February including this one indicate BBC plans to soon close 6 Music.  While it appears that 6 Music will have a few more months before a final decision is made by the Trust that controls the BBC bottom line that’s precious little time and its future is still in doubt.  As you’d expect there’s been rallying support in forums and by other means of the station by its small but dedicated fan base and even some BBC insiders.

I don’t live in the UK and I don’t pay the fee that keeps these services online so I do feel a little awkward complaining about this decision.  Even so, the threatened disappearance of 6 Music is troubling and its closure would create a huge void and lower the choices of quality music stations with a worldwide presence.  Sad really.